Judge says LA County election officials do not have to locate ballots for free in Measure A recount decision • Long Beach Post News lbpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lbpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A tentative ruling posted Friday morning denied a request for the court to order county election officials to pick up the tab for collecting the roughly 100,000 ballots cast in last March’s election so they could be counted at a “reasonable” cost.
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Measure A, a 1% sales-tax increase that the city originally said would last for 10 years, was made permanent by a margin of 16 votes during last March’s municipal election.
The city has used the roughly $60 million the tax generates annually to fund road and infrastructure fixes and also to maintain staffing levels for the city’s fire and police departments.
It faced vocal opposition from community groups like the Long Beach Reform Coalition, which seized on its slim victory to request a recount from Los Angeles County election officials.
However, a new $300 million voting system that allows ballots to be turned in from anywhere in the county, and a global pandemic that created a shortage of workers and mandated physical distancing for those who were available, complicated the recount and pushed the projected cost of it well over $200,000.
Cathy Hirolawa, pharmacy director, shows off the box containing 195 vials of coronavirus vaccine delivered Thursday, Dec. 17, to Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center before putting it into a super freezer at -79 degrees. Facilities director Lani Kono, left, and facilities manager Joe Garibai assist.
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An outbreak of coronavirus at the Long Beach Police Department, following a training session where hundreds of officers reportedly gathered indoors without masks, has some residents charging that police held a super-spreader event.
A complaint filed this week with the Citizen Police Complaint Coalition centers on a large gathering of police officers Nov. 5 at the Long Beach Convention Center. Police had just completed a series of training exercises to prepare for potential unrest around the time of the election, Chief Robert Luna said in an interview last week. The chief stopped by to address the officers for about 10 minutes, praising them for working “their butts off this year.”